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 2-0 
 
LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRY THURSTON PECK 
 
 ANTHON PKOPE9SOR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITEBATUB.E 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1908 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PN 511.P36L7 
 
 3 1924 026 942 098 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 IN THE SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND ART 
 
 APRIL 8, 1908 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026942098 
 

 LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRY THURSTON PECK 
 
 ANTHON PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 V 1908 
 
 h Y 
 
A 4lo02.«{ 
 
 Copyright, 1908, 
 By THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 Set up, and published May, 1908. 
 
LITERATURE 
 
 Literature is older than any of the sciences, as it is the 
 foremost of all the arts. It is the expression in words of 
 whatever man has done or felt or thought at any time 
 since his inarticulate cries and incoherent stammerings 
 were transmuted into language. Nor are we concerned 
 alone with the written records, however formidable the 
 mass of these may be. Recall the seemingly exhaust- 
 less temple-libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. Think 
 of all that has been scratched on bricks and tiles, or 
 graven upon cliffs, or painted upon tombs. Remember 
 the epigraphical and paleographical remains of Greece 
 and Rome and of the Middle Ages, the multitudinous 
 papyri, the mountains of parchment, the smeared palimp- 
 sests, the wooden tablets, the inscribed potsherds, vases, 
 what you please — writing, in fact, whether upon skins 
 or clay or stone or bronze or lead. And think, as well, 
 of the uncounted millions of printed pages that now con- 
 vey the thoughts of men to men. When, in mind, we 
 have marshalled all of this material, we shall then have 
 noted only a part, and that the smaller part, of what we 
 must in some way reckon with when we speak of literature. 
 For there is the literature which came into existence long 
 before the art of writing, — literature which was transmitted 
 orally from age to age or was forgotten almost in the mak- 
 ing. The verbal reflex of action and thought and feeling 
 is forever, in much the same fashion, still taking form 
 
 5 
 
among peoples quite primitive and barbarous — Asiatic, 
 African, and Polynesian— and the curious student may- 
 observe it to-day, just as he might have observed precisely 
 the same thing ten thousand years ago. Therefore, what 
 we usually call the whole body of the literature of man- 
 kind — meaning that to which we have ready access — is 
 only a pitifully meagre fragment, after all. Literature 
 irresistibly reminds one of the marvellous fecundity, the 
 monstrous prodigality of Nature, which will spawn a hun- 
 dred million life-germs and let them perish, in order that a 
 single living organism may survive. 
 
 The immensity of the subject may well bewilder those 
 who seek to reach any sort of generalisation with regard to 
 it. Yet the very fact that our material for study is re- 
 stricted to no one race or nation or time or stratum of 
 civilization is in itself immensely significant. It reveals 
 the presence of a universal instinct — an instinct which 
 craves self-expression and the perpetuity of that self-ex- 
 pression. Literature is but a single manifestation of the 
 will-to-live, the intensely human longing to be felt by 
 others, to be really known by others, and, if possible, to be 
 remembered by others. 
 
 So, amid all the woven words in many tongues, we can 
 feel our way to a very broad definition of literature itself. 
 We may call it an attempt at self-expression through lan- 
 guage, due to at least a sub-conscious desire to perpetuate 
 this self-expression. Such a definition is, as I have said, 
 a very broad one. It is broad enough to include, on the 
 one hand, the cadenced battle-yell of a horde of naked 
 savages, or the measured ritual of a priestly sept or clan, 
 and, on the other hand, it comprehends the delicate lace-like 
 artistry of a lyric poet such as Horace or Hafiz. 
 
 Because literature is self-expression, and because the 
 expression of self is always modified and coloured and 
 variously controlled by a thousand subtle influences — geo- 
 
 6 
 
graphical or racial or national or political or social — litera- 
 ture is an inexhaustible treasure-house whence every science 
 may derive materials that are priceless. Here is a mass 
 of evidence, of recorded experience, which bears upon 
 all the problems of humanity in its slow progress up the 
 heights. Without the literature of past ages the genetic 
 study of any science is impossible. Indeed, whatever the 
 mathematician, the metaphysician, the jurist, the biologist, 
 the astronomer or the philosopher of to-day may choose to 
 write concerning his own pursuit — that, too, is literature. 
 
 Literature is not itself a science. Yet is there possibly 
 such a thing as a science of literature ? Can the whole body 
 of literature, in the largest sense, be studied by scientific 
 methods in such a way as to yield exact and definite results? 
 And what, we may ask, is the definition of a science? I 
 think that Lamennais expressed it very well: "A science is 
 a collection of thoughts and facts upon which all men are 
 agreed." This definition rests upon the principle of com- 
 mon consent; that is, the common consent of "all men" 
 who have studied and tested the thoughts and facts wbich 
 have a direct and necessary relation to a particular science. 
 No science stands still. New discoveries and more pro- 
 found investigations, by eliciting a larger knowledge, will 
 modify its laws. It is true, as Herder wrote to Reinhard, 
 that "the last solved problem of this world and of mankind 
 reveals immediately a new one to be solved." Yet the 
 characteristic trait of an exact science is that, at any given 
 time, its expositors are agreed upon the fundamentals, and 
 that when a change occurs, it is a change accepted by them 
 all. 
 
 Now, in this sense, is there as yet such a thing as a science 
 of literature? If so, in what way did it come into exist- 
 ence ? To search for ultimates, to consider all the influences 
 and forces which by action and reaction, by relation and 
 inter-relation, bring about any definite result, is always 
 
 7 
 
difficult if not impossible. It will be perhaps sufficient here 
 to consider only the immediate causes which have estab- 
 lished what, if it be in reality a science, is the youngest of 
 all sciences. To acquire an accurate perspective we need go 
 no further back than the period of the French Revolution. 
 That great cataclysm was accompanied and followed by 
 an extraordinary intellectual ferment. Old truths were 
 viewed with keenly searching eyes. Old falsehoods and 
 outworn traditions came crashing down with the fabric of 
 that feudalism which had cherished them so long. The 
 spirit of inquiry, of challenge, of analysis, which is the 
 spirit of science itself, was rife throughout the Western 
 world. It resulted in the genesis of a scientific method of 
 approaching literature, — a method blending various prin- 
 ciples that are partly psychological, partly historical, and 
 partly philosophical. There is much that must be here 
 passed over; but the really formative forces may be sum- 
 marised in the influence of four great formative per- 
 sonages. 
 
 Of these the first is the French novelist, Stendhal (or 
 Henri Beyle) . His works are really psychological demon- 
 strations. Fiction, long regarded as an inferior branch, 
 had, after the publication of Rousseau's "Nouvelle 
 Heloise," risen to the rank of serious literature, equal to 
 tragedy itself as a vehicle of thought. With Stendhal in 
 "L 'Amour," and in his novels "Armance," "La Chartreuse 
 de Parme," and "Le Rouge et le Noir," there is a meticu- 
 lous analysis of thought and sentiment, often morbid yet 
 always remarkably. acute. He declared it to be his purpose 
 "to make of fiction a mirror which, as you carry it through 
 the streets, allows every kind of image to be reflected in it 
 just as chance directs." This promised, at least, a degree 
 of objectivity, but the promise was unfulfilled. His books 
 are everywhere subjective, analytical. He cares nothing 
 for environment, but only for individuals. Their most inti- 
 
 8 
 
mate thoughts and feelings, as they nicker into conscious- 
 ness and then die away, he notes,— holding his breath, as it 
 were, in his anxiety not to lose the slightest quiver. It is 
 an anxiety which he communicates to the reader. We feel 
 in studying his pages what Zola has compared to the curi- 
 osity of a young child, holding a watch close to his ear and 
 listening intently to its tickings. Here is a predominant 
 psychology such as pure literature had not known before. 
 Not long afterwards, in Michelet's "Histoire de France" 
 (1833), there appears a new development of historical 
 writing in which enormous erudition drawn from the dust- 
 iest of mediaeval records becomes under the magician's 
 touch so vibrant, so palpitating, so alive with vivid imagery , 
 and so rhythmic in its cadenced prose as to be at times quite 
 truly lyrical. It combines the patient industry of the 
 scholar with the glow and rush and animation of the poet. 
 Every document, every record, every letter is made to yield 
 at least some small detail of costume, features, manners, 
 motive. Michelet showed just what intensity of life could 
 be evoked by genius from the unsunned archives of a half- 
 forgotten past. 
 
 Almost contemporaneously, Auguste Comte proclaimed 
 his philosophy of Positivism. This was apparently unre- 
 lated to literature although destined to affect profoundly 
 the development of literary methodology. The Positive 
 Philosophy with its Law of the Three States — the theolog- 
 ical, the metaphysical, and the positive — involved the ap- 
 plication to social phenomena of scientific laws analogous 
 to those which had been accepted in the study of chemistry, 
 of physics, and of physiology. His theory of "social 
 physics" looked to the coordination of the unquestioned 
 facts of social life. The static law was the law of order. 
 The dynamic law was the law of progress. In the last 
 analysis all the facts of the social cosmos were to be viewed 
 with reference to their mutual relations. "Not only," de- 
 
 9 
 
clared Comte, "must political institutions and social man-, 
 ners and ideas be forever mutually connected; but more 
 than this, the consolidated whole must be linked by its very 
 nature with the corresponding state of humanity's integral 
 development, viewed in all its aspects of intellectual and 
 moral and physical activity." 
 
 Last of all (in 1862) came that brilliant, epoch-making 
 generalisation of Herbert Spencer, Darwinian in its char- 
 acter, yet going far beyond Darwin's extension of a few 
 types in the organic world. Spencer would explain the 
 relations of all phenomena by combining the ideas of per- 
 sistence of force, adjustment to environment, and the 
 theory of natural selection. In other words, he would 
 unify the cosmos, and make clear the myriad identities and 
 relations which are found throughout the whole. The evo- 
 lutionary theory relates not merely to the organic world 
 but to the inorganic world as well, — to the sphere of ethics, 
 politics, and social order. It is biology made universal, 
 noting the relations and affinities, the processes of growth 
 and of decay — "a continuous redistribution of matter and 
 of motion." Thus, his formula applies to everything. 
 Spencer himself applied it to literary evolution. 
 
 The patient, laborious, and brilliant achievements of 
 these four men — Stendhal, the writer of psychological 
 fiction, Michelet, the master of historical imagination, and 
 Comte and Spencer with their application of scientific laws 
 to social life as well as to the world of mind, — may be 
 taken as having laid a basis for the scientific study of litera- 
 ture. I have selected them as typical, being compelled to 
 forego any consideration here of the great creative minds 
 which, in other countries and in France itself, were gradu- 
 ally evolving a body of observations and hypotheses, all of 
 which represent a single tendency. Thus, I must omit any 
 account of the post-Kantian philosophers, Fichte and 
 Hegel, Laas and Ziegler, and also that luminous critic,, 
 
 10 
 
August Wilhelm von Schlegel, whose "Vorlesungen" dis- 
 played the history of all literature as a process of social 
 evolution. Nor can I do more than mention the Italians, 
 Manzoni and De Sanctis, whose thought was so eminently 
 fruitful. The four writers whom I have selected are those 
 whose relation to the new science of literature can be imme- 
 diately and clearly shown. They incarnate the spirit of 
 their time. Each gave a definite impulse of which the 
 effect was felt at once. 
 
 Already, while Stendhal was still writing, Sainte-Beuve 
 had begun his finely discriminating literary studies 
 wherein he applied to his own contemporaries — Chateau- 
 briand, Victor Hugo, and others, — the same sort of subjec- 
 tive analytical methods which the novelist had devoted to 
 the creatures of his imagination. Sainte-Beuve cared more 
 about the personality of his subjects than about their 
 works, or rather he believed that their works could be 
 most clearly illuminated by the light of the writers' per- 
 sonality. He gathered every minute detail as to their 
 ancestry, their lives, their habits, their peculiarities, their 
 friendships and their hatreds, just as Michelet was doing 
 with regard to the men and women of the past. And, like 
 the historian's, his results are concrete, satisfying, life-like. 
 Here is the psychology of Stendhal blended with the verac- 
 ity and vividness of Michelet. Add to this the fact that, 
 although his studies were based upon no conscious system, 
 they show glimpses of the scientific Schwarmerei which 
 was felt by all of his associates and which was in the very air 
 he breathed. Even by his casual phrases he suggests it— the 
 phrases which he uses to describe himself as "botanizing," 
 as "dissecting," as "a natural historian of the mind," and 
 as doing the work of an "anatomist" in literature. As he 
 proceeded with his task, he evolved at least a partial theory 
 of literary study, in recognizing the obligation of criticism 
 to elucidate, to classify, and to attain a philosophic know- 
 
 11 
 
ledge of the human intellect. But he admits, as well, that, 
 in a masterpiece, no general principles can explain that 
 elusive aura which is purely individual. 
 
 This last assertion was challenged, first in theory and 
 finally in practice, by the most splendid historian of litera- 
 ture that France or any other country has given to the 
 world. When Taine wrote his study of English literature, 
 he did so in the spirit of the laboratory. From Stendhal he 
 drew his experimental psychology. From Michelet he got 
 his love for accumulating what he called "the little facts, 
 well-chosen, full of meaning, amply verified, carefully 
 noted." His passion for such facts as could be made to five 
 and glow is shown in his opening pages where he bursts 
 forth: "I would give fifty volumes of charters and a hun- 
 dred volumes of state papers for the memoirs of Cellini, 
 the epistles of Saint Paul, the table-talk of Luther, or the 
 comedies of Aristophanes!" Like Michelet, he could mass 
 his "little facts" and present them with a superb eloquence 
 which Monod has styled "the gorgeous raiment of his 
 logic." His rhetoric is, indeed, so brilliant that for the 
 moment we do not perceive the coldness, the remorseless- 
 ness of his science. Deriving from Hegel certain notions 
 which he blends with the Comtian and Spencerian doc- 
 trines, he would explain all literary phenomena as due to 
 race, environment, and "the moment," that is, the tendency 
 to a definite evolution under given circumstances. Taine 
 with his deterministic philosophy saw causes for every- 
 thing. He saw causes for ambition and courage and truth, 
 as well as for digestion, muscular movement, and animal 
 heat. These are all products. "Virtue and vice are prod- 
 ucts, like vitriol and sugar." And so, too, a national liter- 
 ature is a product, like a honey -comb, and each work which 
 composes it is a product, like each separate cell within the 
 honey-comb, — the necessary result of some cause which the 
 scientific mind can always bring to light. 
 
 12 
 
Amiel once said of Taine's method that it "corroded," 
 that it "gave algebra to those who asked for life." But to 
 Taine more than to any other man is due the honour of 
 having founded a would-be science of literature. Those 
 who follow him merely modify his methods. Brunetiere, 
 for example, insists upon the element of individuality (also 
 a borrowing from Hegel), and discusses biologically the 
 evolution and differentiation of literary types. The Italian, 
 Checchia, applies to literature all the Spencerian principles 
 — natural selection, the struggle for existence, the survival 
 of the fittest, atavism. In England, Posnett failed, though 
 his failure was magnificent, in an attempt to trace the evo- 
 lution of all literature, oriental and occidental as well, from 
 its earliest and simplest forms to those that are the most 
 complex, through the four stages of clan-literature, litera- 
 ture of the city commonwealth, world-literature, and na- 
 tional literature. It is impossible here to speak of the con- 
 tributions to this subject which have come from Germany 
 through the studies of Biedermann, Federn, Schmidt, 
 Wolff, Groth, Scherer, and Goedecke; and from France 
 through the writings of Pellissier, Joseph Texte, Henne- 
 quin, Letourneau, and Ricardou. Nor can I consider here 
 the work of the Spaniard, Menendez, the Italian, Spera, 
 the Danish scholar, Brandes, nor that of our own country- 
 men such as Professors Gummere and Gayley. 
 
 And thus, there came into being a science of literature, 
 or if you prefer, a mode of literary study which aspires to 
 become a science. I dislike to use the term "Comparative 
 Literature." If I do so, it is simply for convenience. The 
 name is almost meaningless, or at any rate, it does not 
 mean what it was meant to mean. It is not a translation 
 of the French litterature comparee. When we speak of 
 "Comparative Literature," we are really to understand the 
 comparative study of literature, or better still, the study of 
 literary evolution. In its strictest, straitest sense, it is a 
 
 13 
 
science which seeks to establish certain general facts regard- 
 ing the whole body of literary expression as noted in all 
 countries and in all times; to detect amid this complex 
 maze the presence of some guiding principle, some control- 
 ling law. Its methods are theoretically those of the com- 
 parative anatomist or the comparative philologist. Like 
 any science, it begins with the accumulation of facts, and 
 it would employ a dispassionate, unbiased criticism in the 
 sifting and interpretation of these facts. 
 
 To be more concrete, I will mention a few of the prob- 
 lems which confront the investigator in this field. For in- 
 stance, in what manner does the evolution of literature first 
 take place? Can literature be shown to have a definite rela- 
 tion to the growth of religious, political, and social institu- 
 tions? To what extent does environment, in the broadest 
 sense of the term, affect the character and growth of litera- 
 ture? Are literary "movements," from the time of their 
 origin down to the period of their decline, due to the opera- 
 tion of any general laws? Or, to suggest other questions 
 collateral to these, is there any one primitive form of self- 
 expression through language, from which all the other 
 forms of self-expression are derived? Does poetry in its 
 historical evolution precede prose, or does prose precede 
 poetry, or are they of simultaneous origin? Is one form 
 of literature developed out of another, — as for instance, the 
 epic from the lyric, the drama from a combination of the 
 lyric and the epic, and prose fiction from the lyric, the epic, 
 and the drama? How has one literary "movement" re- 
 acted upon another? How has the thought of one nation, 
 as embodied in its literature, coloured and helped to mould 
 the literature of another nation? Why is the Teutonic 
 spirit essentially lyrical? Why does the genius of the 
 French turn almost instinctively to a certain ordered 
 imeucaa which willingly accepts control and takes on 
 that character of fixity which the Buddhist declares to be 
 
 14 
 
"the true sign of the law"? Dr. Butler lately said with 
 perfect truth: "The deepest cleavage known to history 
 is that between the Orient and the Occident,"— a thought 
 which is embodied in a well-known refrain of Kip- 
 ling's. This cleavage is a great abyss which has never yet 
 been spanned either in philosophy or in philology. Can 
 the student of Comparative Literature bridge it over and 
 account for the antipodal, the almost antipathetic, differ- 
 ence between the spirit of the East and the spirit of the 
 West? 
 
 Merely to propound these questions is to show how very 
 difficult must be the answer to them, — at least an answer 
 that shall satisfy the definition which I have already quoted 
 from Lamennais. Some enthusiasts are willing to see a 
 parallel between Comparative Anatomy and Comparative 
 Literature. But to assume such a parallel is, of course, 
 misleading. Comparative Anatomy has to do only with 
 material objects. Comparative Literature, on the other 
 hand, cannot exclude the hidden forces and immaterial 
 essences which pervade all self-expression, through the sub- 
 tle, iridescent medium of language, with its delicate shad- 
 ing, its nuances^ its impalpable reflection of man's inner 
 mind, its innumerable variations due to race, tradition, and 
 environment. For example, let us suppose that the skele- 
 ton of a pre-historic elk is viewed and independently de- 
 scribed, first by an American anatomist, then by a German, 
 a Russian, an Italian, a Frenchman, and an Englishman, 
 and that these several reports are placed in the hands of a 
 Japanese anatomist who has never seen the skeleton. The 
 Japanese anatomist will get as clear a comprehension of 
 the object as though he had himself beheld it. He will 
 know that it used to be an elk. The reports given him will 
 all agree. But let a lyric poem or a dramatic trilogy or a 
 literary genre be examined and independently described 
 by an American, a German, a Russian, an Italian, a 
 
 15 
 
Frenchman, and an Englishman, and what sort of an im- 
 pression will be made upon a Japanese by the study of 
 their several opinions? It will be very much as though, in 
 the other case, the skeleton of the elk had been described, 
 first by a person of fairly normal vision, then by one 
 N afflicted with ophthalmia, by another who was strabismic, 
 by another who was astigmatic, by another who was colour- 
 blind, and by still another who was amblyopic almost to 
 the point of caecitude. Put their reports together and 
 give them to an unsuspecting and indifferent person. 
 What impression will he receive from them? Most likely 
 it will never occur to him that these individuals are all 
 describing exactly the same skeleton. If it should occur to 
 him, then what sort of animal will he assume the creature to 
 have been? He might imagine that perhaps it was once 
 a cow, or he might imagine that perhaps it was once a 
 crocodile. 
 
 There is very much the same diversity of view among 
 students of Comparative Literature in the present state of 
 its development. Take, for example, the theory of origins. 
 One investigator will hold, with Steinthal and Posnett, 
 that literature was communal in the beginning, expressing 
 the common feeling of a sept. Another, like Scherer, will 
 say that literature was at first absolutely individual self- 
 expression. One theorist sees somewhere in the remote 
 past "a dancing, singing, improvising multitude." An- 
 other skeptically asks whether there can be such a thing as 
 simultaneous, spontaneous composition. How did poetry 
 begin? Songs were first invented, says one, to lighten 
 labour. No, says another, they were merely mnemonic de- 
 vices to aid the memory. Not at all, remarks a third ; songs 
 were a concomitant of the primitive dance, a vocal expres- 
 sion of the "play instinct," seeking naturally after rhythmic 
 movement. So the Arabs tell us that KhahTs rhythms 
 came to him from hearing the cadenced hammering of the 
 
 16 
 
workmen at the forge, and that the traditional hida, or 
 song of the camel-driver, was inspired by the steady lurch- 
 ing motion of the camel, whose master unconsciously imi- 
 tated its sway and swing in the pulsations of a definite 
 metre. Yet against this view Kawczynski tries to show 
 that neither dance nor song was spontaneously natural, 
 but instead wholly artificial, the invention of some ingen- 
 ious anthropoid, half -man, half -ape ; while again, Schneider 
 and others would look on poetry as having been originally 
 a branch of medicine. Who is agreed, even upon a definition 
 of poetry itself ? Shall we say with Aristotle that it springs 
 from imitation and the sense of rhythm, or with Carlyle 
 that it is "musical thought," or with Wordsworth that it is 
 "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge," or with Mill 
 that it is "the thought and words in which emotion is spon- 
 taneously embodied," or with Emerson that it is "the piety 
 of intellect — a presence of mind that gives a miraculous 
 command of all means of uttering the thought and feeling 
 of the moment"; or with Schopenhauer that it is "the 
 supreme objectification of the idea of man"? Or, bewil- 
 dered by innumerable definitions which do not define or 
 which confuse the poetic gift with the poetic work itself, 
 shall we become Philistines and, turning with a reprehensi- 
 ble feeling of relief to a great mathematician, shall we 
 accept Sir Isaac Newton's dictum, so delightful in its sim- 
 plicity, that "poetry is ingenious fiddle-faddle"? 
 
 Evidently, where no one is agreed even upon funda- 
 mental definitions, a science is as yet not so very scientific. 
 Herr Wilhelm Wetz, an ardent follower of Taine, stoutly 
 asserts that a science of literature is possible, and that in 
 the end it will rival the exact sciences in the precision of its 
 results as well as in the thoroughness of its methods. At 
 the present time, however, we must regard Comparative 
 Literature as being really in its infancy, standing where 
 Comparative Philology stood in the years after Franz 
 
 17 
 
Bopp had published his "Vergleichende Grammatik," and 
 before Verner and Brugmann had reached those epoch- 
 making discoveries which brought order out of chaos. 
 There are, no doubt, relations and principles and laws in 
 literature just as there are relations and principles and 
 laws in astronomy and botany. But it will be a long while, 
 I fear, before the relations and principles and laws of 
 literature are ascertained and generally accepted as repre- 
 senting valid truths. More facts must be accumulated and 
 new hypotheses must be framed, even though the facts are 
 still defective, and even though the hypotheses are still 
 erroneous. "The historical progress of every science," 
 says Huxley, "depends upon the criticism of hypotheses, 
 upon the stripping off, that is, of the untrue or superficial 
 parts, until there remains only that exact verbal expression 
 of as much as we know of the fact and no more, which con- 
 stitutes a perfect scientific theory." The most original of 
 American philosophers once remarked: "Generalisation is 
 always a new influx of the divinity into the mind." It 
 may be that, at some time or other, Comparative Literature 
 may give the world a new influx of divinity by some truly 
 scientific generalisation. But to-day if it be a science at all, 
 it is a very inexact and empirical science, comparable per- 
 haps, at the most, with medicine. Those who pursue it 
 must remain content with contributing many facts of value 
 in the interpretation and appreciation of literature itself. 
 
 The conscientious student of Comparative Literature 
 will interest himself in every form of literary expression. 
 He will find food for thought in the Mahabharata, and he 
 will find it also in a penny-dreadful. He can learn impar- 
 tially from the sayings of Confucius or from the fables 
 of Mr. George Ade. But there is a narrower definition of 
 literature which will exclude a great deal of what many 
 are fond of reading. This narrower definition has to do 
 with literature as a fine art; and literature as a fine art 
 
 18 
 
means self-expression conveyed through language in such 
 a way as to afford an enduring aesthetic pleasure. The 
 distinction between the fine or "liberal" arts and the useful 
 arts was first made plain by Aristotle some twenty-two 
 centuries ago. It was not a distinction which the Greeks 
 had observed before him, but it is a distinction which has 
 been accepted ever since. The useful and the beautiful 
 had hitherto been blended. Perhaps it is unfortunate that 
 they have now become so clearly differentiated. But in 
 literature the difference was actually there, and Aristotle 
 simply recognised its presence. 
 
 Now it is not so very hard to make a definition. The 
 actual difficulty arises in the application of it. Walter 
 Pater once divided literature into "great" literature and 
 "good" literature. This division is convenient. There are 
 some works of genius which everyone would classify as 
 belonging to the category of great literature. There are 
 many other works of which any intelligent person would 
 say that they are neither great nor good. But there is 
 also a literary borderland wherein opinions differ; and no 
 one who is quite honest can say of certain books or other 
 works of literary art in just what category they are rightly 
 to be placed. I am reminded here of Horace who in one 
 of his Satires raises the question whether the sort of 
 verse that he is writing is really poetry at all; and he re- 
 marks that he will discuss this question at another time. 
 But Horace was a very sagacious person, and he took good 
 care that the other time should never come. This same 
 wisdom would befit all of us when we are tempted to be 
 dogmatic on the lower levels of literary criticism. It is 
 safer and much more profitable to look, as Aristotle did, 
 only at those supreme creations, true to life and nature, 
 which have withstood the test of time. 
 
 Aristotle, writing at the beginning of Greek decadence, 
 tried in his "Poetics" to determine from the study of the 
 
 19 
 
greatest works, what laws had influenced their composi- 
 tion, and to set forth the principles of literature and the 
 fine arts. Of course, his sphere of observation was com- 
 paratively limited. The drama, the epic, and history were 
 the forms which he most carefully considered. But, within 
 this sphere, he dealt with masterpieces only, and his mind 
 was not confused by a multitude of varying types. What 
 has always struck me most in reading the "Poetics" is the 
 simplicity and largeness and wisdom of his fundamental 
 teachings. It is because of their simplicity and sanity that 
 they have kept an unshaken hold upon the minds of men, 
 all over the Western world, down to our own time. Aris- 
 totle knew there must be a certain liberality, a certain 
 largeness — to some extent even a certain vagueness — in 
 any good generalisation. He knew that no artist should 
 be absolutely fettered by a formula. Thus, he frankly re- 
 frains from drawing any very clear distinction between 
 poetry and prose, based upon a difference of external form. 
 The history of Herodotus would still have been a history 
 even had it been composed in metre. Presumably the con- 
 verse of this proposition is implied ; and the Homeric epics 
 would have been epic poetry even had they not complied 
 with metric form. It is unnecessary, indeed, that poetry 
 should take any given form or be cast in any given mould, 
 or even that it should have rhythm, and recurring cadences, 
 and perceptible felicities of sound. Thus is Walt Whitman 
 justified by Aristotle. Thus, too, are we justified when we 
 maintain that some of the finest lyrics and some of the most 
 beautiful examples of narrative and meditative poetry in 
 modern literature are to be found in what, conventionally, 
 we describe as prose. We may rightly apply the name 
 "lyric" to certain famous passages in Victor Hugo's novels, 
 such as his "Travailleurs de la Mer," which were written at 
 white heat. We may rightly apply the name "epic" to 
 some of the overwhelming chapters in Himile Zola's "La 
 
 20 
 
Debacle" or in Tolstoy's "War and Peace." The flashing, 
 flaming rhapsodies of Nietzsche are truly dithyrambic 
 poetry. Some of Matthew Arnold's exquisitely wrought 
 passages — his memorable characterisation of Shelley, for 
 example, and his impression of the towers and gardens of 
 Oxford by moonlight— are very beautiful contemplative 
 poetry. 
 
 There is the same largeness of grasp in Aristotle's de- 
 scription of the artistic "Imitation of Nature." "The 
 artist," he remarks, "imitates nature." But it is plain from 
 comparing different passages in Aristotle that it is not a 
 process of slavish copying, but rather one of independent 
 creation which makes the artist a rival even of Nature itself. 
 The artist imitates Nature in that he works upon materials 
 just as Nature does; but out of his materials, which are 
 ideas and experiences, he constructs a real world of which 
 he is himself the demiurge. He will then set before us 
 something, not as it is in its own essence, but as it appears 
 to the human mind and senses. This may be illustrated in 
 the graphic arts by an anecdote often told of Turner. 
 Turner had painted a view of Portsmouth Harbour with 
 its shipping as seen from a considerable distance. An old 
 sea-captain, after carefully scrutinising the painting, said 
 to Turner bluntly: "Your picture is all wrong. You 
 have n't painted any portholes on that man-of-war." "Of 
 course not," answered Turner; "because at such a distance 
 no one could see the portholes." Here is where art is at 
 variance with science. A cavalry charge, as painted by 
 Meissonier, shows us the horses precisely as our senses 
 show them to us. The legs curve as the animals plunge 
 forward, and every line is a line of beauty. Instantaneous 
 photography, however, reveals the fact that, during each 
 fraction of a second of the time in which we view a gallop- 
 ing horse, its limbs never take the position in which we 
 think we see them. They are really disposed most awk- 
 
 21 
 
wardly and even fantastically. The artist's guide in paint- 
 ing them is the human eye and not the sensitive plate of a 
 camera. As Ruskin said in substance, it is the function of 
 art to represent what is visible, and not to give a scientific 
 explanation of what composes anything, or of what may be 
 inside it and invisible, far less just how it came about. 
 
 So again, Aristotle finds an intimate connection be- 
 tween all of the fine arts. Dancing, poetry, music, paint- 
 ing, and sculpture, have a common bond in rhythm — not 
 the rhythm which is expressed in sound, but that subtle 
 symmetry which springs from balance and proportion, 
 whether these be recognised in shape and line and colour, 
 or whether in movement, or in the harmony of the parts 
 that enter into the verses of a great poet or the periods of 
 a great prose writer. But after him came other critics 
 who insisted upon a formal regularity of definition and who 
 strove to blot out any ultimate distinction between the 
 plastic and the graphic arts, and poetry. The famous 
 phrase of Horace in his "Ars Poetica" — ut pictura poesis — 
 became a text from which to preach the doctrine that there 
 is no distinction whatsoever between the scope and function 
 of poetry and the scope and function of painting and 
 sculpture. This narrowing of the Aristotelian teaching 
 was accepted until after the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Everyone is familiar with the clear interpretation 
 which Lessing gave in his "Laocoon"— an interpretation 
 which set this subject once for all in its proper light. 
 
 Lessing, with a profound insight into ultimates, showed 
 that poetry has to do with action, while the plastic arts and 
 painting have to do with situations. Sculpture, for exam- 
 ple, must suggest motion by bodily forms. Poetry, on the 
 other hand, must suggest bodily forms by actions. Paint- 
 ing and sculpture, while they may suggest ideas, can do so 
 only through the associations of sight. They can, indeed, 
 depict movement and action, but this representation is 
 
 22 
 
limited to a single moment of time. Hence, the range of 
 poetry is wider, and it gives to the invention far greater 
 play. Sculpture and painting, since they are static and 
 of the essence of fixity, must confine themselves to the 
 beautiful; while poetry, and, indeed, all literature, in re- 
 vealing the entire moral world, may include the ugly and 
 the horrible as incarnating the evil which is found within 
 the moral world. The fixity of painting and of sculpture 
 imposes a perpetual limitation. To give enduring plea- 
 sure, these must confine themselves to the serene, the 
 majestic, the beautiful, and the sublime. The laws of 
 sculptural beauty do not allow the presentation of faces 
 distorted by hatred, or by anger, or by any violent emotion. 
 Sculpture must not show us contorted limbs or writhing 
 bodies. It may suggest motion, but it must not directly 
 represent it. As Professor Kuno Francke has well said: 
 "A waterfall represented in marble ceases to be a waterfall 
 and becomes a block of ice; a fleeting smile, arrested on 
 canvas, ceases to be a smile and becomes a grin." 
 
 Literature, however, which appeals to us through lan- 
 guage, shakes itself free from the fetters of time and space, 
 and gives us action, movement, continuity, as none of the 
 other arts can do. It is perhaps rather trite to quote here, 
 as a perfect expression of this truth, a few lines from that 
 famous ode of Keats, professedly inspired by the sculp- 
 tured figures on a Grecian urn. An ardent youth ap- 
 proaches a graceful girl who gladly waits his coming. But 
 in sculpture they can never meet. Their love remains with- 
 out its consummation. 
 
 "Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
 Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
 Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve; 
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" 
 23 
 
After Lessing had published his "Laocoon," Goethe 
 wrote of it: "One must be young to conceive what an in- 
 fluence it had on us in taking us from the realm of dreary 
 contemplation to the free fields of thought. The distinc- 
 tion of the speaking and the plastic arts was clear. All the 
 consequences of this glorious thought were revealed to us 
 by a flash of lightning." At present there is a disposition 
 to belittle Lessing's insight which restored the true 
 supremacy of Aristotle. The distinction which he made is 
 now so obvious as to be sneered at as a truism. A sneer 
 like this is most ungrateful as well as rather stupid. Every 
 genuine truth in time becomes a truism. Indeed, a genuine 
 truth can be found nowhere save in truisms or perhaps in 
 paradoxes ; for, after all, a paradox is nothing but a truism 
 which looks as though it had gone wrong. 
 
 I have touched upon one or two of the Aristotelian 
 teachings as to literature, simply to illustrate the marvel- 
 lous influence which he has exerted on succeeding ages. 
 He has often been misinterpreted. He has sometimes been 
 attacked as critically unsound. But never has he been 
 ignored. The subtlety and vitality of his wonderful mind 
 have lost nothing of their power through all the centuries. 
 There have been many periods of literary criticism since his 
 time— the Alexandro-Roman period with its would-be cos- 
 mopolitanism, the Mediaeval period with its symbolism, 
 the period of the Renaissance when the true Aristotelian 
 doctrine of the imitation of nature returned, only to be 
 shrivelled into pseudo-classicism, and the period which fol- 
 lowed the French Revolution;— yet never has the West- 
 ern world shaken off the Aristotelian influence. From 
 Plotinus and Longinus and Cicero and Horace and Plu- 
 tarch, to Castelvetro and Corneille and Lessing and even 
 Taine, nearly all discussions of the deeper problems of 
 literature begin with the "Poetics" of Aristotle. 
 
 The most profound of all his doctrines is that which has 
 
 24 
 
to do with the Universal. The imitation of Nature of which 
 he speaks must be an imitation of that in Nature which is 
 universal. In literature, this means that the artist will not 
 appeal, in what he writes, to the mood, or the emotion, or 
 the prejudice of a limited group of human beings, even 
 though that group be a nation or a race. It will not sug- 
 gest what belongs only to a particular moment, a particular 
 period, or to a particular individual, as an individual. He 
 must, instead, somehow infuse into his work that feeling 
 which is elemental and which is common to all mankind 
 beneath the superficial differences of time and place and 
 nationality. He must reject the ephemeral and the irrele- 
 vant in accordance with the saying of Michelangelo who 
 defined art as "the purgation of superfluities." Only in 
 this way can he give enduring life to what he writes. 
 Lately this doctrine has been challenged. It has been said 
 that, in the development of the human race, with all 
 the differences of language, of social, religious, and 
 political institutions, no universal element remains. Can 
 this be really true? Upon the answer to the question 
 many things depend. Unless there is something in the 
 emotional nature of man that is as changeless as the per- 
 sistence of force, then there can be no such thing as perma- 
 nence in literature. The great works of classical antiquity 
 will ultimately perish. The great classics of modern 
 times will follow them down into the pit. Nowhere in this 
 whole spacious field of man's creativeness will there be 
 stability, but only unending change and ultimate decay. 
 
 Let us consider whether the doctrine of the Universal 
 rests on reasonable grounds. There surely is a universal 
 element in man's nature. The difficulty arises when you 
 ask whether anyone, however great his sympathy, his in- 
 sight, and his mastery of literary art, can seize and fix for- 
 ever in literature an expression of universality so as to 
 make his masterpiece one to be understood by human be- 
 
 25 
 
ings everywhere and throughout all time. None will deny 
 the existence of emotions which are elemental and also uni- 
 versal. Hate, fear, love, the instinct of self-preservation, 
 reverence for something that is above us or beyond us, and 
 also that quality which is expressed most surely by the 
 Latin word virtus — all these affect the actions of men and 
 women everywhere. The most primitive utterance of them 
 through sound, just one degree below the point at which 
 articulate language begins, is universally intelligible. A 
 shout of triumph, a yell of hate, a scream of fear, a moan 
 of pain, a cry of passion, — the meaning of these is obvious 
 at once to the rudest savage and to the most highly culti- 
 vated European. But while the emotions, as emotions, 
 universally exist, they are by no means manifested in the 
 same way or excited by the same causes. For example, 
 let us believe the poet who says 
 
 The truth of truths is love." 
 
 Yet the objects to which love goes out and those to which 
 it does not go out, are very different in different ages and 
 among different peoples. In Greece and Rome it did not go 
 out to the helpless child exposed by its parents at birth. 
 With us it is not excited, as it is in the Chinese, by the 
 remembrance of our distant ancestors. In many lands it is 
 not given to the wife. Again, with us there is a love of 
 country, often greater and more intense than love of life, 
 or even than the love of those who are very dear to us. Yet 
 to a Chinese a sentiment such as this is unintelligible. Few 
 Chinese serve their country just because it is their country. 
 Confucius himself, in a sentence recorded in his "Analects," 
 declared: "He who is not in office has no interest in his 
 country's government." And so when literature tries to 
 give expression to any of the elemental emotions it may 
 make a strong appeal to one race, with whose traditions it 
 
 26 
 
accords, while it may seem strange and even monstrous to 
 the people of another race. Even an educated and Angli- 
 cised Hindu could not read without repulsion Thackeray's 
 novel "Vanity Fair," with its story of the long devotion 
 of Dobhin for the widow of his dead friend, Osborne. The 
 Hindu simply would not understand it; for, according to 
 his view, Amelia should have been burned alive at the death 
 of her first husband. To take a more striking instance, 
 let us consider whether Shakespeare is as truly universal 
 as the English-speaking peoples think he is. Almost all 
 concede that "Hamlet" is the finest of his plays, the one in 
 which his genius finds its subtlest and most powerful ex- 
 pression. Yet we remember how Voltaire (in the intro- 
 duction to "Semiramis") asserted that the play reminded 
 him of "the work of a drunken savage." This we might 
 set down to national prejudice. But let us turn from the 
 Frenchman with his pseudo-classical tradition, and get the 
 opinion of one who is in every respect the antithesis of Vol- 
 taire — the Russian, Tolstoy. He once remarked: "This 
 play of Shakespeare afflicts me with that peculiar malaise 
 which meretricious works produce." It is "calculated and 
 unspontaneous." It is "coarse and often senseless." If 
 we turn again, even to an Englishman, to a countryman of 
 Shakespeare, to John Ruskin, we read in his "Praeterita" 
 these words : "Why must every happy scene in the loveliest 
 plays be all mixed and encumbered with languid and 
 common work?" 
 
 Again, a Spencerian such as Professor Posnett picks to 
 pieces certain of the Shakespearian dramas for the same 
 purpose,— to show that their author is not universal in his 
 conception of character, "any more than in his conception 
 of plants or animals or scenery." Mr. Posnett asserts that 
 Shakespeare's Romans, for example, are not historical 
 Romans. They are not even pagans. His women- 
 Portia, Calphurnia, Volumnia, Virgilia, "are really Chris- 
 
 27 
 
tian women married by Christian marriage," and knowing 
 the relations of family life which are familiar to modern 
 and Christian times. The Roman men in Shakespeare's 
 plays are in reality men of Elizabethan London, when they 
 are not mediaeval knights. So, too, of the Shakespearian 
 anachronisms, such as the cannon at the siege of Troy, and 
 the town-clocks striking in the Rome of Julius Caesar. 
 Hence, it is argued that we are not to look for universality 
 in even the greatest poets, of whom Shakespeare may be 
 taken as a type. 
 
 To my mind the defect in all this reasoning is a defect 
 which shows the Aristotelian influence again. Aristotle 
 thought the drama, or, in other words, tragedy, to be the 
 highest form of literary art; and, perhaps unconsciously, 
 Professor Posnett has accepted this view in trying to 
 refute the doctrine of the Universal. But in fact, the 
 drama — that is to say the acted drama — is only in part 
 a form of literature. It is something more than literature, 
 for it is literature blended with all the other arts. The 
 dance, the song, the painter's colouring, and music, too, are 
 there, and the effect of animated sculpture is found in the 
 living men and women who impersonate the characters. 
 This remarkable melange of the arts does, to be sure, 
 make the drama overwhelming in its immediate effect; but 
 it also forces the dramatist to be something more or less 
 than a literary artist. The accessories which aid him to 
 melt his audience to tears or rouse them to mirth or inflame 
 them to a pitch of passionate intensity overcloud the 
 drama as pure literature. They tend to confine the 
 general action and also the conception of character 
 to a particular time or country; and therefore, when, 
 centuries later, we read the plays, stripped of their acces- 
 sories, we have a feeling of remoteness, so that the purely 
 theatric defects of the artist stand out glaringly and we 
 mock at his anachronisms. The really universal element in 
 
 28 
 
the drama, therefore, I take to be those passages which are 
 the least dramatic. It must have been such passages which 
 Ruskin had in mind when he spoke of the "happy scenes" 
 and "loveliness" of Shakespeare's plays ; and doubtless he 
 recalled only the ephemeral element when he spoke of the 
 "languid, common work." Voltaire would never have 
 styled Shakespeare "a drunken savage" had he read in 
 "Hamlet" only the fine soliloquies and philosophic lines, 
 and had his attention not been distracted by the stabbings, 
 murders, and sudden deaths which to-day, even among 
 men of Shakespeare's race, make the judicious grieve. 
 
 I believe, therefore, that the universal element is most 
 clearly felt in the literature which comes nearest to 
 the primitive form of self-expression, — that is to say, the 
 lyric, where the individual soul floats, as it were, 
 above the limitations of time and space and all convention, 
 and displays itself in something of its elemental nakedness. 
 And here we must consider the two modes which are styled 
 respectively Classicism and Romanticism. Many critics, 
 influenced by Comte, perceive three modes in literature, 
 corresponding with Comte's Three States. It is a bit of 
 classification which pleases those who are fond of sym- 
 metrical formulas and who perhaps inherit an atavistic 
 reverence for the once mystic number three. Thus, as 
 Comte gives us the theological state, the metaphysical 
 state, and the positive state, so these Comtian critics speak 
 of the ancient mode, the mediaeval mode, and the modern 
 mode, or, let us say, Classicism, Symbolism, and Roman- 
 ticism. This is very pretty as a piece of classification, but 
 in reality we may eliminate Symbolism, since it is partly 
 frozen Classicism and partly weak Romanticism. 
 
 Mr. Lecky has well said that every human being is born 
 either a Stoic or an Epicurean. One might also say that 
 every human being is born with a temperamental tendency 
 either to Classicism or to Romanticism. And these terms 
 
 29 
 
must be used with technical exactness. In reading many of 
 our histories of literature, one might fancy that Romanti- 
 cism was essentially a modern thing, which sprang up in 
 Germany, and France, and England in the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries. In truth, however, Romanticism is 
 no more essentially modern than Classicism is essentially 
 ancient. Modern times have developed nothing new in the 
 modes of literary expression or, for that matter, in literary 
 forms. Thus, Montaigne is not really the father of the 
 essay, for we find the essay written most delightfully by 
 Horace and Seneca and Plutarch. The realistic and even 
 the naturalistic novel of Zola and his imitators is as ancient 
 as Petronius. The psychico-physiological novel can be 
 traced to the "Daphnis and Chloe" of the pseudo-Longus. 
 The historical romance is as old as Xenophon. The novel 
 told in letters comes to us from Alciphron of Athens. The 
 same thing is true in poetry as well. The melodrama, in 
 whatever modern language, has its ancestor in Seneca's 
 "Medea," where the scorned and insulted wife goes mad 
 upon the stage and, rolling her bloodshot eyes, plunges a 
 dagger into the hearts of her own children. For the proto- 
 type of the enervated decadent — the self -pitying, effem- 
 inate, neurotic youth, an Alfred de Musset or a Baudelaire 
 — we can go back as far, at least, as the Roman Propertius, 
 with his genius and his degeneracy. There is nothing new 
 in literature to-day and probably there never has been for 
 the last forty centuries. 
 
 And so Romanticism is not especially a new thing any 
 more than Classicism is especially an ancient thing. Both 
 of them really represent opposing phases of temperament. 
 Classicism means self -repression, impersonality, detach- 
 ment in the artist, displaying universal truths and feel- 
 ings, but doing it in such a way that those who read take no 
 thought of the author but only of the author's work. In 
 Classicism one finds lofty, calm conceptions, and an appre- 
 
 30 
 
ciation of what is subtle, delicate, and varied. Classicism 
 does not deal with mystery and pathos or momentary 
 passion or eccentric character. It portrays things with 
 simplicity and it has the temperament of equity, serenity, 
 cnrovhaioTr}^ and freedom from all self-assertion. This was 
 not peculiar to the Greeks, for the Greeks share it with 
 many moderns. Romanticism, on the other hand, as 
 Brunetiere has very clearly pointed out, is intensely indi- 
 vidualistic. It involves "artistic egoism, since the emotions 
 of a writer are effectively employed only when they re-echo 
 and intensify the emotions which are our own." So 
 Goethe expressed the Romantic creed in a Kantian manner 
 when he wrote: "As man must live from within outward, 
 so the artist must work from within outward, under- 
 standing that, no matter what contortions ne may make, he 
 can only bring to light his own individuality. ... In 
 this way alone is it possible to be original." And again, 
 when the great German was asked to rouse his country- 
 men against the French invaders at the time of the Napo- 
 leonic wars, he said to Eckermann: "I have composed 
 love-songs only when I loved. Can I possibly write songs 
 of hate without really hating?" 
 
 Classicism was not predominant even in the most classic 
 period of Greek antiquity. By common consent, Sophocles 
 is the incarnation of the classic spirit, lofty, noble, free 
 from passion, purged of superfluities. But his great con- 
 temporary, Euripides, was essentially romantic. Dr. Ver- 
 rall has acutely said: 'As truly as a song is written to be 
 sung, the plays of Euripides were written to be talked 
 about." Men came away from the "Oedipus" of Sophocles, 
 awed and moved by the grandeur and the almost religious 
 solemnity of what they had just seen. They came away 
 from the "Alcestis" of Euripides chattering volubly of 
 what the "master" meant, and they were puzzled by his 
 ingenuities as men to-day are puzzled by the ingenuities 
 
 31 
 
of Ibsen. Dramatically, indeed, Euripides is a remote 
 ancestor of George Bernard Shaw. Philosophically, his 
 indeterminism, his indifferentism, his belief that chance 
 controls the destinies of men, make him a remote 
 ancestor of Professor William James. Vergil was in part 
 Classicist and in part Romanticist. Throughout most of 
 the "Aeneid" he is classic, but in the Fourth Book he is a 
 Romantic of the Romantics with his poignant portrayal of 
 a woman's tenderness and passionate self-abandonment. 
 Nor does Romanticism have to do with the beautiful alone. 
 Nietzsche once wrote: "The idealist is incorrigible. If 
 cast down from heaven, he makes an ideal out of hell." 
 It is so with the Romanticist. When Juliet is wooed by 
 Romeo in the moonlit beauty of an Italian garden, with 
 the soft wind murmuring in the trees and the notes of the 
 nightingale fluting amid the words of love, Shakespeare 
 is a Romantic. But when in "L'Assommoir," Gervaise, 
 the washerwoman, is wooed by Coupeau, the tinsmith, in a 
 squalid entresol, on a stifling night, by the flare of a gutter- 
 ing tallow candle amid the ascending effluvia of an open 
 sewer, while the maudlin sobs of a drunkard in the street 
 below are heard from time to time, then Zola is a Romantic 
 too. It is nearly the reverse of the same shield. 
 
 There is no other true division of the works of literature. 
 A realist may be Romantic or he may be Classic, and so 
 may a symbolist, a naturalist or a sensitivist. It all depends 
 on whether he forces his own personality upon you, or 
 whether he lets the action arise as of necessity. Thus, 
 Milton is a Classicist, and Tennyson a Romanticist. Flau- 
 bert is a Classicist, while Zola is nearly always a Romanti- 
 cist. George Eliot is a Classicist, while Thackeray is a 
 Romanticist. In any case, the law of the Universal holds ; 
 and the Universal is clearly seen in the particular, wherever 
 literature has .created a semblance of organic nature, a true 
 illusion in the world of our ideas. 
 
 32 
 
Classicism, by its conformity to a certain order and 
 decorum, tends to harden into an artistic mechanism. 
 Romanticism, because it obeys no law, is apt to degenerate 
 into pathological grotesqueness. Then we have, on the one 
 hand, a pseudo-classicism, and on the other hand a pseudo- 
 romanticism. The pseudo-classic writer is dull because he 
 is the slave of classic formulas. The pseudo-romanticist is 
 dull because he shows us the isolated individual, not as a 
 universal type, but as an eccentric pervert, with whom 
 most of us have nought in common. We see our own selves 
 reflected in the diary of Samuel Pepys, or in the auto- 
 biography of Benjamin Franklin, in Defoe's realism or 
 even in the irresponsible memoirs of Casanova; but we 
 turn away from such a writer as the German, Barthold 
 Heinrich Brockes, when in his poetry he thanks God for 
 having blessed him during his sixty-five years of life with 
 46,700 meals, and 23,360 comfortable nights. This is the 
 individual who is typical of nothing, who has no meaning 
 for us. Who cares how many meals Brockes consumed or 
 how many nights he slept in comfort? In Defoe and 
 Franklin the Universal is discernible in the individual; in 
 Brockes there is seen only the stall-fed egoist who, in the 
 terse phrase of Rivarol, "writes for us with opium on a 
 sheet of lead." 
 
 The art of literature is an art which affords enduring 
 aesthetic pleasure. But some have asked the question "To 
 whom should it afford the pleasure?" To the artist him- 
 self? Or to the rest of us? Are we to hold that the artist 
 is independent of the world, that he should live in a tour 
 d'ivoire, devoted wholly to his technique, and feeling for 
 his potential readers that touch of condescension which the 
 lawyer and the physician exhibit to the layman? This is 
 the creed of Art for Art's Sake, and it is opposed to the 
 primary conception of literature which makes it something 
 which desires to endure. Yet it can endure only when the 
 
 33 
 
artist is in full accord with the intangible yet powerful in- 
 fluences which surround him. Literature is a social thing ; 
 and this, at least, the comparative study of literature has 
 plainly shown. The more sensitive, the more alive the 
 artist is to the meaning of his work, the more surely he re- 
 sponds to the insistent pressure of the whole great world 
 without. The noblest creative minds in all the past are 
 those of men who lived with other men and who wrought 
 out their masterpieces amid the rush of human life. Aes- 
 chylus the soldier and official, Sophocles the general and 
 commander of a fleet, Aristophanes, Euripides, all of 
 them contending for dramatic prizes, Pindar and Simoni- 
 des the court poets, Dante the ardent patriot, Shakespeare 
 the busy man of practical affairs, Cervantes the naval com- 
 missary and tax-collector, — can we imagine any of these 
 men as isolated from active life, or as closely studying the 
 niceties of mere technique? Mr. Howells has very finely 
 said: "Supreme art in literature has its highest effect in 
 making men set art forever below humanity." 
 
 There is an ethical aspect to this question which is always 
 coming into view and troubling many honest souls. If the 
 literary artist considers art alone, morality is quite clearly 
 no concern of his. If, on the other hand, mere pleasure for 
 his readers is the aim of literature, this seems a no less 
 dangerous doctrine. Here is apparently a serious dilemma. 
 Aristotle everywhere implies that the artist has nothing to 
 do with instruction. His duty is not to teach but simply to 
 give pleasure. This was also the conclusion reached long 
 afterward by Kant and those who thought with him. Yet 
 many have tried to evade the logic of this reasoning. 
 Brunetiere, who believes that literature tends toward the 
 perfection of social life, rather feebly says that it will al- 
 ways be moral "to the exact extent to which morality is 
 indispensable." Posnett, even, shrinks from admitting 
 frankly that art has no immediate connection with moral- 
 
 34 
 
ity. He figures someone as saying that his view of litera- 
 ture "cuts at the roots of moral conduct," and he exclaims 
 'Tar from it!" Yet he gives no reason for his indignant 
 answer. Indeed, all who think that pleasure is the aim of 
 literature are very mealy-mouthed in speaking of its moral 
 aspect. And why? Because they all approach it from the 
 wrong direction. Pleasure is, in truth, the only guide which 
 literature must follow. The literary artist may be unmoral 
 or immoral if he pleases. He is free to pander to the base. 
 He is free to prostitute his art. But if he does so, then he 
 does it at his peril. And this peril is a peril to the one thing 
 for which every true artist cares the most— his lasting repu- 
 tation, his enduring fame. For the healthy human mind 
 is no more gratified by what is low and vile in art, than 
 is the healthy human body willing to be nourished from a 
 garbage-heap. Of all the masterpieces which have stood 
 the test of time, which men and women read and love, there 
 is not one whose spirit is unethical. In Dr. Johnson's 
 homely phrase, every one of them has salt enough to keep 
 it sweet. And this is why the doctrine of aesthetic pleasure 
 has no danger in it. Art is defended against itself by the 
 innate cleanness and Tightness of the human mind, and not 
 by any law of logic or of criticism. 
 
 And what shall we hold to be the function of literary 
 criticism? I say the "function" and not the "object," for 
 the object of each school of criticism may be wholly differ- 
 ent from that of all the rest. Some persons look on criti- 
 cism with mistrust, because they say that criticism kills 
 creation. The history of literature does not justify this 
 view. In Greece and England, for example, creation pre- 
 ceded criticism. In Germany, criticism preceded creation ; 
 for, as Mr. Saintsbury has cleverly expressed it: "The 
 whole of German literature from 1750 to 1830 was a sort 
 of seminar." In France, creation and criticism have gone 
 hand in hand together through the centuries. What, then, 
 
 35 
 
is the true function of literary criticism? Everyone remem- 
 bers Matthew Arnold's ingenious exposition of it: that 
 criticism prepares the materials, that is to say, the ideas, 
 upon which the creative power works. Criticism analyses 
 and discusses, while the highest order of literary genius 
 synthesises and creates. But to-day, criticism— or rather 
 the critics— have grown more arrogant. Thus, Posnett 
 bluntly says that criticism is superior to creation, and that 
 "the glimmerings of human divinity are visible" not in the 
 artist's work but "in the reflection of the critic." M. Ana- 
 tole France goes even further, and declares that criticism 
 is the "ultimate evolution of literature— the last in date of 
 all literary forms and destined in the end to absorb all 
 others." 
 
 Sic vos non vobis! one is tempted to exclaim. So a lovely 
 landscape, rich with the deep greenery of groves, and 
 meadows flecked with, the star-fire and gold of flowers 
 are intended for whom? For you? Forme? No; for the 
 botanist alone. Man is born — why? That he may live and 
 love and play his part in the world of thought and action? 
 No. He is born only that his body may be dissected by the 
 physiologist after death ! And literature, that has risen like 
 a radiant mist from every land and every race for centuries, 
 was brought into being solely for the critic! The joys of 
 uncounted millions have given it their gladness for its own. 
 Some of its noblest pages have been written by men and 
 women who dipped their pens in their own blood and tears 
 — and all that criticism might at some time condescend to 
 study it! Better than this would be the state of things 
 which Landor noted when he said of his fellow country- 
 men : "We admire by tradition and we criticise by caprice." 
 
 No ; the true function of literary criticism is the modest 
 one which Sainte-Beuve assigned to it as "the secretary of 
 the public." Criticism is "an emanation of books," and its 
 true function is neither to create nor greatly to assist crea- 
 
 36 
 
tion. Whether it be good or bad, whether you call it objec- 
 tive or subjective, dogmatic or judicial, impressionistic or 
 what you please, its actual worth is found in this: that it 
 does help in various ways to stimulate the love of literature 
 itself. It arouses our interest, it piques our curiosity, it 
 excites our disapproval, it combats our prejudices, it re- 
 veals to us new facets as in a brilliant which already we 
 admire. If it only leads us to think more of what we read, 
 and to read more in order that we may think, — then its true 
 function has been faithfully discharged. 
 
 And as to the appreciation of literature, you may ap- 
 proach it zoologically like Sainte-Beuve, or biologically 
 like Taine, or in any way that you prefer. But the glo- 
 rious fact about it is that you do not need come to it in any 
 set and formal way, but that you plunge into it with glad- 
 ness as a strong swimmer plunges into the waters of a sum- 
 mer sea. Political economy may be the dismal science, but 
 literature is surely the joyous art. To derive pleasure from 
 it one does not have to pass an entrance examination. 
 Here is where it differs from the sciences. Before you can 
 ascend into the hyperspaces of transcendental mathematics 
 and play there like a kitten with a skein of silk, you must 
 have learned to scorn delights and live laborious days. Be- 
 fore you can feel the joy of the biologist and work out a 
 law according to which, after breeding white mice with 
 black mice, and their offspring with various grey mice, you 
 will have at last a litter composed of a definite number of 
 grey and black and white mice and just one small yellow 
 mouse, — before you can do this, you must have been mewed 
 up with mice for many years. But with literature the case 
 is very different. If you have felt much and experienced 
 much, then you will receive the more. If you are still new 
 to life, then literature will teach you what life means. But 
 criticism, beyond a certain point, is not merely a hindrance. 
 It is an impertinence. In Schopenhauer's words, it 
 
 37 
 
busies itself with the clay and the colours and does not see 
 the beauty of the vase. Take what view you will of 
 the greatest works of genius. Interpret them as suits 
 you best. What does it matter, for example, that Cer- 
 vantes himself meant Don Quixote to be only a fan- 
 tastic fool, the butt of everyone who meets him? We, 
 on the contrary, are welcome to see in him an allegory 
 of the Ideal struggling vainly against materialism. 
 What does it matter that Shakespeare meant Shylock to 
 appear only as a greedy, malignant, revengeful outcast, 
 rightfully deprived in the end of both his ducats and his 
 daughter? We may see him an infinitely pathetic, even 
 tragic, figure, just as Heine saw him. Interpretation, 
 understanding are free to all. One chooses gladly the open 
 road, the brilliant sunshine, and the sapphire arch of 
 heaven overhead. In literature, at least, we do not prefer 
 to travel by the subway. 
 
 Emerson once wrote: "The only sin is limitation." 
 There are probably some other sins ; but, in our enjoyment 
 of literature, surely the greatest sin is limitation. Here 
 every mood is fully met. Here every wish is answered. 
 Here one keeps the best of all good company. Criticism 
 cannot make us feel the influence of that inextricable re- 
 siduum, that "inexplicable monad," which lies in a rich 
 individuality. For, after criticism has spoken its last word, 
 and after analysis has reached the utmost limit of its 
 power, there is only the beginning of what, for the want 
 of a better name, we are accustomed to call genius. And 
 you can no more analyse genius than you can express the 
 splendour of God in volts and ohms. 
 
 If criticism is in reality becoming the "ultimate evolu- 
 tion, the final type of literature," then our civilization has 
 reached the beginning of its end. It is turning Alex- 
 andrian or Byzantine. I wonder how often in the past men 
 have felt that the world was growing old and grey, and 
 
 38 
 
that its intellectual life was verging on extinction. Doubt- 
 less far back in Babylonia and Assyria and Egypt, they 
 thought that decadence and exhaustion had begun. Nearly 
 every age since then has experienced the same feeling. It 
 is echoed in the lines of Tennyson written in his declining 
 years : 
 
 Gone the cry of Forward ! Forward ! lost within a growing gloom ; 
 Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb, — 
 
 Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space, 
 Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace. 
 
 And the same thought was in the mind of Mr. Froude 
 when he wrote these striking sentences : 
 
 "Who knows whereabouts we are in the duration of the 
 race? Is humanity crawling out of the cradle, or tottering 
 into the grave? Is it in the nursery, in the schoolroom, or 
 in opening manhood ? Who knows ?" 
 
 Who, indeed? But when we look upon the past with 
 all its limitations, its pettiness, and its particularism, and 
 when we discern, as we think that we discern to-day, the 
 dawning of a new and splendid era of humanity, with a 
 fuller, freer recognition of essential oneness, why despond? 
 Great events are still to happen; and to great events, 
 literature always throbs responsively in new forms and 
 with fresh founts of inspiration. Hence, the exultant 
 words of Emerson, with their magnificent exaggeration, 
 come to me as the voice of truth itself: "AH literature is 
 yet to be written. Poetry has scarce chanted its first song. 
 The world is new, untried. Do not believe the past. I 
 give to you the Universe to-day,— a virgin!" 
 
 39 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 A SERIES of twenty-two lectures descriptive in untechnical language of 
 the achievements in Science, Philosophy and Art, and indicating the 
 present status of these subjects as concepts of human knowledge, are being 
 delivered at Columbia University, during the academic year 1907-1908, by 
 various professors chosen to represent the several departments of instruction. 
 
 MATHEMATICS, by Cassius Jackson Keyser, Adrain Professor of Mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 PHYSICS, by Ernest Fox Nichols, Professor of Experimental Physics. 
 
 CHEMISTRY, by Charles F. Chandler, Professor of Chemistry. 
 
 ASTRONOMY, by Harold Jacoby, Rutherfurd Professor of Astronomy. 
 
 GEOLOGY, by James Furman Kemp, Professor of Geology. 
 
 BIOLOGY, by Edmund B. Wilson, Professor of Zoology. 
 
 PHYSIOLOGY, by Frederic S. Lee, Professor of Physiology, 
 
 BOTANY, by Herbert Maule Richards, Professor of Botany. 
 
 ZOOLOGY, by Henry E. Crampton, Professor of Zoology. 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY, by Franz Boas, Professor of Anthropology. 
 
 ARCHAEOLOGY, by James Rignall Wheeler, Professor of Greek Archae- 
 ology and Art. 
 
 HISTORY, by James Harvey Robinson, Professor of History. 
 
 ECONOMICS, by Henry Rogers Seager, Professor of Political Economy. 
 
 POLITICS, by Charles A. Beard, Adjunct Professor of Politics. 
 
 JURISPRUDENCE, by Munroe Smith, Professor of Roman Law and 
 Comparative Jurisprudence. 
 
 SOCIOLOGY, by Franklin Henry Giddings, Professor of Sociology. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY, by Nicholas Murray Butler, President of the University. 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY, by Robert S. Woodworth, Adjunct Professor of Psy- 
 chology. 
 
 METAPHYSICS, by Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Johnsonian Professor of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 ETHICS, by John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy. 
 
 PHILOLOGY, by A. V. W. Jackson, Professor of Indo-Iranian Lan- 
 guages. 
 
 LITERATURE, by Harry Thurston Peck, Anthon Professor of the Latin 
 Language and Literature. 
 
 These lectures are published by the Columbia University Press separately in 
 pamphlet form, at the uniform price of twenty-five cents, by mail twenty-eight 
 cents. Orders will be taken for the separate pamphlets, or for the whole series. 
 
 Address 
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